iPad Dominates Enterprise Tablet Market

Apple is winning the tablet battles that matter, even in the workplace, new research says.

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Apple's iPads remain the most-used tablet line, both generally and in the workplace, according to two reports released Wednesday.

The mobility management vendor Good Technology said iPads accounted for 91.45% of its customers' tablet activations in the fourth quarter of 2013. If smartphones are included, Apple's slates represented 19% of all mobile devices deployed during the quarter.

Good said iPhones and iPads represented 73% of device activations in the quarter. More than half of all devices deployed were iPhones, and Apple products were the 10 most popular devices tracked in the report.

Android tablets and smartphones combined represent only 26% of device activations in Good's data set. This indicates not only that enterprise iPad adoption trounced corporate uptake of Android tablets, but that iPads alone accounted for nearly as many device activations as all Android devices of all form factors, smartphones included.

Each report is limited in certain ways. Good drew data only from customers that activated at least five devices over the quarter, meaning the statistics represents an unknown subset of the more than 5,000 organizations using the company's products.

Moreover, while Good services a small number of Windows Phone customers, its products do not yet support Windows 8 or 8.1 tablets. Other indicators suggest Windows slates have failed to make a dent on the overall market, however, so it's unlikely that Good's Windows omission led to a substantial overestimation of iPad share. In fact, Good's data indirectly supports the notion that Windows tablets haven't disrupted the market: It found that mobile device activations grew 34% in 2013, which, given the iOS and Android-heavy nature of the company's data pool, suggests Windows tablets haven't slowed the progress of competing platforms.

Chitika derives data from a large sample of 300 million ad impressions spread across 300,000 websites. But while Good's statistics come from devices in up to 130 countries, Chitika looks only at tablets in the US and Canada. It additionally records data based on Web usage, not individual users.

Like the Good report, Chitika's data offers limited insight into Windows tablets. The company can differentiate ARM-based Windows devices such as the Surface or Surface 2 from other tablets, but it cannot distinguish x86-based slates such as the Surface Pro from Windows desktops. Consequently, only ARM-based Windows devices factor into Chitika's report.

Nevertheless, both reports offer intriguing observations. Chitika found that iPads obliterated ARM-based Windows tablets overall, but it also noted that Surface and Surface 2 users are most active during the workday, suggesting Microsoft has made very modest progress positioning its tablets as productivity-oriented devices.

Good's data provides some context for overall market share statistics, which generally tend to favor Android. Research firm IDC announced in late January, for example, that iPads accounted for 33.8% of Q4 tablet shipments. That mark was good enough to make Apple the top tablet vendor, with a nearly 80% lead over second-place Samsung, but it might still seem incongruous with Good's account, which describes a near-monopoly for iPads in the enterprise.

IDC's figures don't suggest that Good's results are skewed -- rather, Good's data contextualizes the iPad's actual standing in the market. Apple's defenders frequently point out that iPad users are likely to purchase apps, accessories, and additional iOS and OS X products. Android, in contrast, gains much of its market share via cheap "white box" devices that rarely encourage platform loyalty. The argument is that Android might be gaining market share, but iOS continues to win the battles that really matter -- such as high adoption rates among affluent consumers, popularity in the enterprise, and an ecosystem that effectively encourages both app purchases and device upgrades.

Apple CEO Tim Cook referenced this concept in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. "I look at the mobile phone market as having three kinds of phones: feature phones, smartphones that function as or are used as feature phones, and real smartphones," Cook said. "I care about the market share of the last one. I don't care how many feature phones are sold. The more that are sold I look at as good because those are all potential future customers for real smartphones. The same thing goes for the second category. I'd like to convert as many of those as possible to real smartphones."

While Cook was explicitly talking about the iPhone, Apple has approached the iPad in much the same way. The company has no interest in competing with budget devices for market share -- not as long as it continues to dominate the most lucrative market segments.

Good's numbers also revealed how businesses are using iPads. Tablets have become popular in a variety of industries, including aviation, retail, and manufacturing, but Good found almost 47% of tracked Q4 iPad activations were in financial services. Business and professional services was a distant second (13.8%), followed by manufacturing (9%), governments and the public sector (9%), and healthcare (3.8%).

Good also reported that enterprises have continued to accelerate the deployment of mobile apps. Companies in the data set most commonly ran document-editing and file access tools on their tablets, though Good noted that custom applications and business intelligence products are becoming more popular.

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Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. He previously worked in talent representation in the entertainment industry, as a freelance copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher. Michael earned a BA in English from Stanford University in 2005 ... View Full Bio

If Microsoft put Office on the iPad, the tablet market might be forever out of reach, but at least it would be moving more copies of Office. It's hard for me to see why Microsoft, HP or somebody hasn't succeeded in producing a useful workplace tablet, running Office.

I'm constantly seeing marketshare numbers stating that Apple has such and such a percentage of devices shipped. This is such a meaningless statement. We don't even know the shipping numbers from all companies. Samsung refuses to give them out since they were called out on that by Lenovo in the first calendar quarter of 2011. So every number involving Samsung is no more than a guess, as those numbers can't be matched against numbers from Samsung.
The same thing is true for Microsoft. All we know with them, is that when numbers are good, they will announce them. But when they are bad, they will say nothing other than the equally meaningless "sold out".
But it's even worse! We often see the word "sold" instead of shipped. Who other than Apple gives sell through? But we see Apple's sell through numbers. Interestingly, we also see Apple's shipped numbers, though no one other than Apple uses them. What do I mean by that? Shipped is number of product shipped from the manufacturer. It includes the number of product sold, whatever that may be, and the number of product out there, but not yet sold to the end user. There is also the sold to the retailer, distributer, etc. but that's not what we normally expect to see from these numbers.
But Apple also supplies the number of product "in the channel" as the number of days or weeks of supply they want to have moving there. That number, plus the number of sell through, is the number shipped. Apple derives that by dividing the total number sold by the number of days in the quarter (approximately). That gives the number sold per day, or week, as the case may be.
They then say how much product is in the channel, by days, or weeks of supply. Add that to the number sold, and, guess what? We now have the number shipped! So if they sold 20 million devices the quarter, and have a typical 5 week supply in the channel, that's another 7.8 million. Add that to the 20 million, and we get 27.8 million shipped.
Pretty simple, but I never see that number quoted. Apple's numbers are lumped together with all the other shipped numbers, both real, and made up, using Apple's sold numbers. Hardly fair!
So what is the actuall SOLD marketshare Apple has? I suspect it's much higher than the 33.8% used. Particularly when compared to Samsung. It might be remembered that in the lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, both were required to give the actual sell through of the models under question. Of the million tablets Samsung was supposed to have shipped to the USA around the time in question, only 38 thousand had been sold. If the phones in question, on,y between one third, to one half of the numbers estimated to have been shipped were sold.
So why aren't Samsung's numbers revised drastically downwards? It's a good, and fair question. Considering that Apple's usage is vastly higher, one has to think that it's more than Apple's devices being used more, it's also because the other devices aren't selling in the numbers the analysts are telling us they are.
I'd like to see a real article investigating this.

Among 688 respondents, 46% have deployed mobile apps, with an additional 24% planning to in the next year. Soon all apps will look like mobile apps – and it's past time for those with no plans to get cracking.